Chapter 268: Time to Front Up (2/2)

The power seemed wildly suspicious. For one thing, no racial gift Jason had heard of came close to that complexity. It was more akin to an essence ability after ranking up multiple times. For another, it seemed very specific. It was clearly designed to push Jason into certain directions, for reasons that remained hidden from him. Whatever the World-Phoenix’s agenda, Jason was certain this power was designed to serve it.

Jason had two further misgivings. The major one was the removal of resurrection options. To someone from a world without magic, that might seem like a cheap cost, but Jason had already died twice. He knew full well that high-ranked healing magic had miraculous effects, to the point of bringing back the dead if the healer moved quickly enough.

While the nirvanic rebirth effect was some compensation, it would take Jason decades to reach diamond rank, even under the far-from-certain assumption that he would at all. In all that time, he would have only one chance to revive at each rank, compared to the potentially countless times a healer could bring him back from the brink.

His other concern was that it precluded using the outworlder effect of having his soul traverse the astral and form a new body in a new world. He didn’t know if it was possible to engineer this effect without a transcendent power like the World-Phoenix token, but accepting this power would rule it out entirely.

That was not something Jason was comfortable with. His intention was to settle affairs with his family, then find a way back to the magical Earth. He had expected to be higher rank before that ever became an issue. Bronze-rank seemed too low to find a means of traversing worlds, and there weren’t any monsters to grind his way up with on his own Earth. Figuring out how to artificially trigger an outworlder effect was the only idea he had, thus far.

Those concerns, plus a healthy scepticism about the agendas of great astral beings, left Jason unwilling to accept the power. The World-Phoenix certainly knew how to lay out tempting bait, however. Much of the ability seemed tailor made for taking the fight to the Builder’s minions, which he suspected it was.

The question was why. Was it to push Jason into taking the ability, or was fighting the Builder the entire point? Why would a great astral being even go to the effort for someone like him? Surely there was no shortage of powerful, knowledgeable people who would be willing to act on the World-Phoenix’s behalf. He was self aware enough to realise that his ego was perhaps a touch over-sized, but even he would admit to being unremarkable on a cosmic scale.

Jason had no intention of accepting that power without answering at least some of those questions. He didn’t flat out decline it, either. There didn’t seem to be a time limit on the offer, and if there had been, it would have tipped him into rejecting it outright. For the moment he could just leave things as they were, leaving the decision for when he had more information.

Finally he moved on to the last window. This was a power evolution that he had received the old-fashioned way, by having the crap kicked out of him. He already had an instinctive sense of the power but Clive was right; having it all spelled out was extremely useful.

Ability: [Spirit Vault]

This ability is evolved from the ability [Inventory].You have a dimensional storage space.You may call up a gate and physically enter your dimensional storage space. Only you may enter; others cannot be invited or forcibly intrude. You may directly portal from within the storage space to another area using the location of the gate as a starting point, even if the gate is obstructed or destroyed, preventing ordinary egress.You may summon familiars within the storage space without the use of a ritual, although any material requirements of the ritual must still be consumed.

“See, now that’s how a power evolution should work. Not eighteen different things, no over-the-top effects. No getting killed, no agendas. Just a nice bit of extra utility, with that little bit of flair that makes you excited to check it out.”

He stood up from his chair and waved a hand over the floor and in response, a line of darkness appeared. He gestured upwards and an obsidian arch rose up, filled with darkness.

“Aren’t you familiar,” he told it. He went to step through, then stopped, picked up his chair and carried it through with him.

He emerged from an identical arch into a luxurious gazebo, elaborately carved from marbled obsidian in swirling black and white. The gazebo was circular and had three more archways spaced equidistantly around it. The archway he had stepped through was filled with a starry void, while the next was filled with what looked like a vertical sheet of roiling blood. After that was one filled with pure darkness, much like his normal portal arches. The last had the blue and orange eye nebula that was Gordon’s signature filling it.

The floor was a tile mosaic that looked just like the personal crest on Jason’s back; a daylight sky inside a cloak, surrounded by the night sky. More arresting was the environment in which the gazebo was located. Untethered from the ground, it floated through a dark, rain-filled sky. Neither rain nor wind encroached upon the gazebo’s interior, despite the open sides. A large crystal that looked to have naturally grown down from the centre of the arched ceiling gave off a cool, pleasant light.

Outside of the gazebo, numerous objects orbited around it, glowing with transcendent light like stars shining in the dark. Looking at them, Jason realised that they were the items stored in his inventory. He threw out the chair he was holding as an experiment and it gained its own halo of light and it joined the other objects in orbit. Jason spied a stack of sandwiches, gathered together gently glowing. With a simple thought from Jason, one of the sandwiches separated itself and floated to his hand.

“Nice,” he said, then took a bite.

He turned back to the archways, clearly associated with his three familiars.

“Alright, mates. Time to front up.”

Items started flying into the gazebo, vanishing into the three archways. Jason had enough materials to summon Shade and Gordon once each, and Colin twice. Along with the material components being consumed, the required spirit coins came hurtling up and in from somewhere below the floating gazebo.

Leeches started spilling out of the bloody arch, forming a pile from which strips of ragged, bloody cloth emerged to start binding the pile into shape. Motes of blue and orange light started streaming out of the nebula arch like a swarm of fireflies, slowly coalescing into Gordon’s form. A dark shape slowly pushed itself out through the final arch, taking the form of Shade. As his shadow familiar appeared, Jason’s own shadow vanished. Additional bodies emerged from the arch, one after another, before melding together as one.

“It is good to see you alive again, Mr. Asano.”

“Good to be seen,” Jason said. “It comes as bit of a surprise.”

“Not entirely,” Shade said. “The World-Phoenix token in your possession was always a comfort to me, in regards to your safety.”

“Wait,” Jason said. “You knew?”

“Of course,” Shade said, in his usual dignified tone. “I’m not a scrub.”